RUSH - RARE 1st LP MOON RECORDS LABEL MN-100

	£		205
	$		272

With the exception of Rush’s first single, their debut LP on their own Moon Records label is arguably the most desirable collectable for Rush fans.

The “Moon Records” label was set up by Rush’s managers after London Records agreed to distribute their debut single if they could find a label. Despite the single showing disappointing sales, the Rush management decided to go for broke and record the group’s debut LP with an initial run of 3500 copies.

Their debut LP was more of a success than their 1st single, quickly selling 5000 copies with 3000 of these being bought in Canada and the rest being sold in the US. The LP was brought to the attention of Cliff Burstein at Mercury Records who was blown away by the record and knew immediately that Mercury should sign Rush. The rest, as they say, is history.

The main differences between the Moon and Mercury releases -- apart from the labels -- are that the Moon issue has a bright red “RUSH” logo, whereas the Mercury issue was changed to pink, and also the rear credits on the back of the Moon cover are different to (see picture) the Mercury release. 

On to the record itself…

The Sleeve

Oh dear, as you can see from the photos the record sleeve suffers from the fact that some sacrilegious individual thought it would be a really excellent idea to try their own hand at cover art by tracing over the “Rush” logo on the front cover with red paint (see close up pic). Apart from this and a few other light surface marks the cover is in excellent shape: the corners are not bent and bashed, there are no creases, splits or folds and there is virtually no evidence of ring wear. This is probably in no small part due to the sleeve being made of ‘heavy duty’ cardboard. The inner sleeve is plain white and I have no idea whether this is original or not as all the copies of this LP that I’ve seen have had a plain white inner so it’s hard to tell them apart.

The Vinyl

Now for the good news. The vinyl is in superb condition. As you can see from the photos the labels are clean with no marks and very little evidence of spindle wear. The vinyl retains its original sheen and has a few VERY LIGHT surface marks which are just about visible when viewed under a bright light. There are no skips or jumps, and there is an almost complete absence of any surface noise. The LP plays very quiet between tracks and during quiet musical passages. Having played this all the way through several times I only ever heard the odd spec of surface noise, which could have been down to static. This vinyl has obviously been well looked after.

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